Tuesday 29 April 2008

Change the Rules! (No.1 in a regular series)

Having watched the Hopkins v Calzaghe fight again at the weekend, I was once again struck by the number of problems with the current scoring system:
1/ Judges are wrongly being discouraged from scoring rounds even. Many of the rounds in the Hopkins v Calzaghe fight were very difficult to call for either fighter, but the judges apparently felt obliged to score rounds 10-9, rather than 10-10.
2/ Why they use a “10-point must” system - where at least one of the boxers is awarded the maximum 10 points in each round - is beyond me (to give an extreme example, a round where both boxers stare at each other and don’t throw any punches must, presumably, be scored 10-10). This system tends to penalise fighters like Hopkins, who usually have a number of ‘big’ rounds in each fight, and rewards ‘plodders’ like Calzaghe. In their first fight, Hopkins dominated Taylor in a couple of rounds and had him in real trouble, yet, since there were no knockdowns, these were only scored 10-9 – the same score as those rounds which Taylor just edged. And why the heck should fighters be awarded the maximum score for a dull round? It makes no sense. I would advocate a system where each fighter is awarded between 0 and 5 points for each round. A fairly dull round could be scored, say, 2-1, a cracking round 5-5. If one fighter dominates in a particular round, that might be scored, say, 5-1.
3/ Judges (and the majority of people who watch boxing contests) don’t seem to understand that four areas of performance are being assessed - clean punching, effective aggressiveness, ring generalship and defence. Many observers gave Calzaghe the fight because he was continually going forward. However, if you move toward your opponent but can't land clean shots – as Calzaghe did for much of the fight - you don't have effective aggressiveness. Hopkins, as usual, excelled in the area of defence – but two of the three judges clearly didn’t reward him for the number of times he made Calzaghe miss. Boxing authorities either need to change the rules of scoring, or make sure the judges apply them correctly. But of course, boxing being boxing, neither of these things is going to happen.

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